Finally!

11:00 pm Saturday September 3, 2011

I’ve been in India approximately 5 hours and I have already lost my temper over cultural differences. In this case, airport regulations. When checking in my first 12 hour flight at JFK, I was told that I had to collect my bags and recheck in both Delhi and Bombay. A pain, but not the end of the world. It was even harder to be annoyed when the sweet Indian man at the counter asked me if I was upset after breaking the news to me. I assured him it was no problem. As luck would have it, I was the only person in my row on the plane. Unfortunately the highly anticipated bed was snatched away when a woman asked to move to the other end of the row. Still, not the end of the world, as she was very sweet, chatted with me about India and even offered to be my host if I ever came to Calcutta. I slept much better than expected (despite the poor man retching in the bathroom, which was right behind my seat) and was fed three times. I landed in Delhi and went to collect my bags but, low and behold, they weren’t on the track. This could easily have been a disaster, but again as luck would have it, all I had to do was inquire and within 20 minutes they were returned to me. So, after a few educated guesses, I was making my way from arrivals into departures to check in to my next flight and once again pass my bags over to the hands of fate. I enter a visitor center surrounded by glass panels; the only way out into the check in counters is guarded by two security officers with large guns who tell me I am not allowed to leave the area to check in until 6 hours before my flight. My flight leaves at 3:45 am and it was 6 pm. The small visitor area had a few connected chairs, no bathrooms, no food. Seriously?

Seeing as how I really didn’t have a choice in the matter, I spread my stuff out over a couple of chairs, being sure to clutch my purse in arms and put my head on top of my backpack with my laptop and camera, and took a series of short naps until 10 pm, 6 hours before my flight. I go up to the men once again and ask if its ok to go now. 

“No.”

“Why? I thought you said I could go 6 hours before?”

“11:00.”

“But, I don’t - “

“11:00.”

I am ashamed and embarrassed to write exactly how I reacted, but it was not becoming. I gathered my things and backtracked to where I had arrived, by this time desperately needing a bathroom. After finding one and then purchasing my first cup of Darjeeling tea, I’m sitting in a small cafe sipping and reflecting. 

To me, the most exciting thing about traveling is experiencing the different ways people live, including their clothes, food, jobs, family life, etc. But it is naive to think that I am always going to appreciate or admire or understand these differences. I have always had a problem with doing something that I don’t see the point of and it is exasperating to submit without understanding why it is necessary. The passage in the Bible that reads “God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference” seems a bit solemn for this example, but it is a wonderful thing to repeat before you lose your temper. 

12:05 pm Sunday Sept 4 2011

And Part II of airport nightmares begins...

After waiting ten hours at the Delhi airport, I finally boarded my plane to Mumbai at 3 am. Strangely enough I didn’t fall asleep right away but instead started a movie. At the end of the movie, I was still in Delhi. The plane was having engine problems. Finally at 5:45 am, the pilot announced that the plane was unfit for flight. We had to exit, go through customs, claim our bags, and fight our way past those nasty security guards in the visitor center to reach the Air India counter and schedule another flight to Mumbai. There was another one at 8 am, which landed at 10 am, making it impossible to catch my 11 am flight to Mangalore. After finally arriving in Mumbai I then had to find my way to Air India customer services, where I was told it was my fault I missed the flight because I didn’t ask what to do as soon as I got off the plane and that I would have to buy another flight through Kingfisher because Air India didn’t have another flight until the following day. Lovely.

Fortunately, I had learned my lesson earlier and kept my temper. They eventually put me on the Kingfisher flight without charging me. It departs at 1:45, almost 3 hours after I should have left, but I will still have enough daylight to reach my final destination of Kundapur by bus. There I can finally shower and sleep in a bed!

Another reason I was able to keep sane during this ordeal, and the reason I was using a plural pronoun in the first paragraph, is that I met a friend! Handling the occasional travel mishap is always made more bearable when you have someone to laugh with about it. Andy is a dentist from Ireland. He had spent 12 days in Agra with a renowned Indian dentist and was on his way to meet his brother in Brisbon, New Zealand. We met while waiting for our bags and audibly expressing our concerns about missing our connecting flights (as it turns out, both of us did miss them) due to the cancelled flight. Though I only spent 3 hours with him and will most likely never see him ever again, he taught me two really awesome things. First, a Hindi word that he didn’t know how to spell, so I will spell it phonetically: jugar. Of course there is no direct translation but roughly, to improvise, or as he said “an application of the mind.” He was taught this word while driving from Aggra to Delhi; there was a traffic jam because a truck had broke down on the highway. Instead of using the most efficient solution, i.e. a tow truck, there were 20 men all pushing it to the side of the road. Jugar. It’s not the right way to get things done, but it still worked because someone applied their mind in a different way. I really like it.

The second thing he taught me inadvertently. Andy’s trip to Agra was the start of a year long sabbatical that included broadening his dentistry experience, gathering research on dental implants (on which he intends to write a book), visiting his brother in New Zealand, kite surfing with his friends in Hawaii, then visiting cousins in Columbia, and hiking with his mother in Peru. Sweet life huh? The point is, I talk to a lot of people about what I’m going to do with my life after India. I’d really love to find a job, move somewhere semi-permanently, and grow some, albeit shallow, roots. But then the next minute my mind is wandering to all the far away lands I haven’t seen yet. Everyone always says, “travel now, because after you get a job you won’t be able to.” Well, Andy is living proof that that isn’t always true. Getting a job isn’t about giving up your passions. Andy found a way to combine the things he is most interested in so that he didn’t have to completely sacrifice one for the other. If someone is truly devoted to never stop exploring, they will find a way to do it.

So, what could have been a stressful, tear-inducing dilemma turned into an unlikely friendship and another lesson learned. Not the way I would have planned or preferred it, but it worked out anyway. Jugar.